


Bergholt Stuttley Johnson

by Aegir



Series: Break-ins and Break-outs [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Did someone forget to mention it was April 1st?”  Sam Wilson eyes the room in irritation.  “It’s not often Nat gets fooled, but this contact must have been having a laugh.”</p>
<p>Or: The one where Sam and Bucky end up in a SHIELD museum room for Howard Stark's tech.  Naturally HYDRA ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bergholt Stuttley Johnson

**Author's Note:**

> So my 'Five Times...' story spawned a couple of sequels when I wasn't looking. There will be a third story sometime with Steve in it.  
> I thought when I started this series it would not be 'Age of Ultron' compliant, but thanks to Joss Whedon not mentioning Bucky by name this could very well be the story of what Sam is doing while Steve is attacking the HYDRA base at the start.

“Did someone forget to mention it was April 1st?” Sam Wilson eyes the room in irritation. “It’s not often Nat gets fooled, but this contact must have been having a laugh.”

“You think?” Barnes says, and Sam can’t read that tone, which unsettles him more than he likes to admit. It could be sarcasm or disagreement or an honest question.  

“Why would a man on the run bother breaking into a museum?”

“I broke into the Smithsonian,” Barnes says. OK, Sam should have seen that coming.

“Well, come to think, so did Steve. What did you take?”

“Nothing, just wanted to check out the blue jacket. It was a replica.” He sounds oddly disgusted.

“Let me correct that. Why would a man on the run who isn’t over ninety break into a museum? Unless Rumlow has a fixation with display cases or the draft designs for the SHIELD logo. Anything worth taking would have been removed already. Plenty of agencies have been fighting over the remains of SHIELD.” Sam tries a plain door without a handle, finds it locked and kicks it down – not as easy an exercise as it looks on TV – only to find painting gear inside. “If Steve was here and not running round Avenging that cupboard would probably have contained HYDRA secret files, or a swarm of genetically modified ants, or something that isn’t paint anyway.” He says it to himself, but has no doubts Barnes would hear.

“This is Stark’s tech.”

“Must be outdated, SHIELD wouldn’t put anything still useful in a museum.”

“Howard Stark, not the son.” Barnes says, investigating the place in a way Sam would have called poking around if it hadn’t been for his scarily intent focus. “An internal museum. Why? What’s the point, if only SHIELD workers could see it?”

“If SHIELD could tell themselves their past was great, it was easier to believe they were acting for the best.” Sam shrugs. “Because they’ve always been good guys, and good guys wouldn’t do anything bad. I’m guessing the elaborate security was to make themselves feel important.”

“Maybe not. The thing about Stark,” Barnes says, “is that his inventions usually worked, but often not in the way they were supposed to. He was – was it you who gave Steve his first Discworld?”

“Yeah, what’s that got to do with Howard Stark?”

“Steve practically fell off the couch laughing when he read about B. S. Johnson, because that’s exactly what Stark was. The kind of guy who’d start out trying to invent an improved Swiss Army knife and end up with a pocket flame-thrower. He tried distilling alcohol once, and not even Dugan would risk drinking the stuff, but it blew up real good.” There’s no warmth in his voice when he talks about Stark senior, the tone is purely matter of fact. “I remember this one,” he goes on, peering into a display case, then the left hand does something very fast and complicated and the case is suddenly open. “I wonder if… no, that part’s broken. This one was intended as the last word in camouflage. It would show what would be there if the Commandos – or whoever – weren’t. Empty fields, empty streets, something like that.”

“So how did it turn out?”

“Well, a troop of turquoise camels trekking through the forest certainly gave us the advantage of surprise. Downside was it couldn’t be used very often, because HYDRA caught on pretty fast.” Barnes turns the device over. “I wonder if it can be fixed? No good to us now though.” He prowls on through the cases. “There could be something in here.”

“Or just a load of junk.” Sam reckons Barnes may be more fixated on his own past than on anything else, not that he can blame the guy. He’d just feel a lot easier if Steve hadn’t had an emergency Avengers call-in, something to do with the left-overs of that manic with delusions of godhood who tried to break New York.  Sam knows, his mind knows, that the things Barnes did under HYDRA control weren’t his fault, but Sam’s body doesn’t always get the memo and he’s a lot tenser round Barnes than he would like.

“I’ll check the rest of the building,” he says. “According to Nat’s information none of the stuff in the other rooms is like this. It’s more things like Director Phillips’ old swimming certificates or Peggy Carter’s boots.” Like the Smithsonian exhibit. What had Barnes felt when he saw his ghost there? Sam’s not going to ask.

There’s too many ghosts in here, but they’re all older than Sam, so he doesn’t have to worry about running into any of his own ghosts, raw and recent.

It’s not ghosts outside though, and it’s only Sam’s hearing being sharp enough to pick up the sound of a safety catch being clicked off that allows him to duck back inside the room before the bullets start flying.

“OK, I owe Nat’s contact an apology.” The door is steel-lined, and for once SHIELD paranoia is starting to look like quite a good thing. Of course that’s the moment when Barnes pulls the door open, throws himself through it and into the corridor in a graceful half-dive half-roll and starts spraying the area with a semi-automatic Sam hadn’t even known he had on him before rolling back through the door and slamming it shut again.

He can see why Steve likes this guy.

“Did you see Rumlow?” Sam asks.

“No, did you?”

“No. Doesn’t matter right now I guess.” There’s no way Rumlow could have escaped from custody without some inside help, so tracking him is more than just nailing one dangerous maniac, but right now the priority has to be getting out of here. Another round of bullets fired into the door underlines that. Naturally there’s no other door and no visible handy ceiling vents, still Sam did some handyman jobs before he enlisted, and he knows how to read a room for which walls are walls and which are just flimsy partitions. The wall by the paint tin cupboard is just a partition. “We should be able to punch our way through.” Well, Barnes’ left arm should be able to. Naturally this is the point where Barnes gets stubborn.

“They want something here,”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “I got that.”

“So, did you bring any explosives?”

“No, I don’t tend to carry armed bombs around with me, and anyway we can’t blow this place up! There’s a working building on top of it, we don’t know which of these walls may be lode bearing.”

“Well, you could get out through the partition wall and call in a bomb alert. That would get the area cleared, while I work out a way to destroy this stuff.”

“And it would also get me Steve Rogers’ ‘I am really disappointed in you’ look, when he finds out I left you in here with a bunch of HYDRA leftovers. You have to know what that look is like.”

“Don’t work on me,” the twitch at the corner of his mouth might have been the start of a smirk. “Know the one you mean, Falsworth swore it made him feel about five years old. But it’s nothing compared to Sarah Rogers’ ‘I am really disappointed’ look, believe me.”

“Guess I’ll have to.” Sam pulls out his phone. “Right, I’m going to call my girlfriend.”

“Hey. This could be going better, but you don’t need to make any farewell calls just yet.”

“I’m not. Sharon works for an agency. She’ll be able to call someone and get us reinforcements.” This probably wasn’t CIA jurisdiction, but Sharon would know someone to get hold of. Barnes is tensing up, so Sam adds quickly, “Let me make the call. Then we can work on a way of not getting arrested when the reinforcements turn up.” He’s definitely not facing Steve with the news that some other agency has identified Barnes as the Winter Soldier and thrown him in a cell.

The call to Sharon goes as well as expected. There’s the predictable “You are what?” and “What were you even doing?,” and the almost as predictable refusal to believe Steve isn’t involved in this, as if Steve Rogers is the only reason Sam ever gets into trouble. Well, actually Steve Rogers is the only reason Sam gets into trouble these days, but he isn’t here right now which is the thing Sharon seems to be having difficulty grasping. Sam can hardly explain either that the person who is there with him is the notorious Winter Soldier who also happens to be Captain America’s no longer dead best friend.

“His name’s, er, classified,” he tries to explain.

“Sam, this had better not be your idea of an early April Fool.”

“Swear on my grandmother’s brownie recipe it’s serious.”

There’s a sigh from the other end of the line. “Alright Rico, I’ll trust you this time.”

“Rico?” says Sam, offended. “I’m Kowalski. Definitely.”

“Well I’m not admitting to being Eva. Try not to get hit with any mutation rays before the cavalry gets there.”

Barnes is looking at him strangely when he severs the connection. “Guess you haven’t seen _Penguins of Madagascar_ , then?” Sam says.

Barnes doesn’t exactly reply, instead he throws the door open again, throws himself out again, and starts shooting, again. Sam curses, presses himself against the door frame and gives covering fire. When Barnes rolls back in there’s blood on his thigh, and torn flesh through a tear in black cloth.

“Let me fix that,” Sam says, automatically reaching for his first aid kit.

“It won’t slow me down,” says Barnes.

“Maybe not, but slipping in your blood would slow me down.” It’s a flesh wound, the bullet’s gone clean through, no vital arteries nicked, but would still require hospital treatment in almost anyone else (and that ‘almost’ is a commentary on Sam’s life). He’d prefer a hospital for Barnes, but he’s not unrealistic enough to think it will happen. In fact as he gets the emergency bandage on as quickly as possible, he wonders if it might not have been better to suggest Barnes do it himself because he’s rigid under Sam’s hands and those deep, heavy breaths have to be a calming technique. He gets it done safely, though, and Barnes’ display does appear to have put the opposition off for now.

“We need a diversion,” Barnes says when it’s done. “While you were chatting I checked out some more of these. I think this one still works.”   Sam is looking at something with the appearance of a small round-bodied plane with short round-ended wings. It’s slightly smaller than the ones they have on toddler sized roundabouts

“Originally,” Barnes says, “this was meant to be transport. Stark meant them to carry one person each, like mini-hovercraft. He could never get them to bear the weight, but they turned out to be workable drones. This is the one he modified to throw acid.” Sam may have made a choking sound, because Barnes adds, “Don’t know that he ever used it. When Stark got an idea he always had to try it out. Then sometimes he backed off from the results.”

“We don’t have anything for it to throw,” Sam says.

“Yeah, we do,” says Barnes.

The timing goes just right. While the HYDRA guys are still screaming, Sam and Barnes break out through the back wall. By the time HYDRA work out they’ve only been sprayed with paint and not something deadly, they’re all under arrest. Barnes isn’t too happy about having to leave most of Howard Stark’s stuff behind, but there wasn’t much choice, and Sam points out any large government agency will probably take fifteen years just listing the stuff. Anyway they can talk about it to Natasha and Steve just as soon as the Avengers are back from Hush-Hushville; Stark the younger can probably put a claim in, keep the stuff tied up in lawsuits.

Turns out none of the captured paint-covered guys is Rumlow, but you can’t have everything.

“I owe you one,” Sam tells Sharon.

Steve is going to laugh himself silly when he hears.

 


End file.
